but the battle, and the hero-death, and victory’s fire-chariot carrying men to the Immortals, shall never be thine. I pity thee; brag not, or I shall have to despise thee.
Such is Oliver’s one Letter from Ely. ‘To guide us a little through the void gulf towards his next Letter, we will here intercalate the following small fractions of Chronology.
1639
May—July. The Scots at their Glasgow Assembly[1] had rent their Tulchan Apparatus in so rough a way, and otherwise so ill comported themselves, his Majesty saw good, in the beginning of this year, immense negotiation and messaging to and fro having proved so futile, to chastise them with an Army. By unheard-of exertions in the Extra-Parliamentary way, his Majesty got an Army ready; marched with it to Berwick,—is at Newcastle, 8th May 1639.[2] But, alas, the Scots, with a much better Army, already lay encamped on Dunse Law; every nobleman with his tenants there, as a drilled regiment, round him; old Fieldmarshal Lesley for their generalissimo; at every Colonel’s tent this pennant flying, For Christ’s Crown and Covenant: there was no fighting to be thought of.[3] Neither could the Pacification there patched up be of long continuance. The Scots disbanded their soldiers; but kept the officers, mostly Gustavus-Adolphus men, still within sight.
1640
The Scotch Pacification, hastily patched up at Dunse Hill. did not last; discrepancies arose as to the practical meaning
